Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Cain, Koch Brothers' Goose Liver?

Force-feeding is an unexpected subject this weekend as Herman Cain aces a “Meet the Press” grilling while gourmands stuff themselves with soon-to-be-illegal foie gras at a Los Angeles eat-in protest.

David Gregory does little to ruffle the candidate’s smooth-as-pate patter, even as Associated Press reveals that Cain’s “economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to two billionaire brothers who bankroll right-leaning causes through their group Americans for Prosperity.”

On MTP, Cain dismisses as “a joke” his electrified border fence line that has been drawing cheers from campaign crowds, but the extent of his ties to the Koches is no laughing matter. Supporters may point out that Reagan fronted for General Electric after his failed movie career, but the Great Communicator was not advocating frying illegal aliens or overtaxing the poor.

Back in what used to be Reaganland, a Hollywood version of Occupy Wall Street takes place in a high-priced eatery named “Animal” as patrons stuff themselves with the goose liver that will soon be illegal under a new state law.

Libertarians may be outraged, but the ban was passed through efforts of animal rights’ organizations, one of whose leaders belittled the eight-course foie gras meal:

“The idea of paying upwards of $100 to eat pieces of a diseased organ would be laughably funny to most people if it didn’t involve cramming pipes down birds’ throats and painfully force-feeding them.”

At the very least, Angelenos know how the delicacy some of them savor is created and how much killer cholesterol it contains, but the electoral dish that the Koch brothers are serving has more in it than the pizza and burgers that made Herman Cain rich and famous.

"Herman Cain is the first presidential corporate spokes-candidate," says a liberal activist. "The best way to have your issues talked about in the issue debate is to have a candidate in your pocket with snappy comebacks and easily branded policy papers which mask how destructive they would be."

As the new GOP frontrunner moves ahead, voters will want to know much more about what, like unfortunate geese, they are being force-fed by lazy journalism not for their own nutrition but to serve the ulterior motives of billionaires with funnels.